The knitting of fabrics on two needle beds is well known for the formation of fashioned knit products. In such knitting, it is common to transfer stitch loops from the needles of one of the needle beds to needles of the other needle bed to form a predetermined knit pattern.
When such knitting is performed on a circular knitting machine, commonly referred to as a double-knit circular knitting machine, the transfer may be from dial needles on the dial needle bed to cylinder needles on the needle cylinder and vice-versa. Because of the transfer pockets on such transfer needles, and the concomitant thickness of such needles, the needle grooves in such dial and cylinder are commonly of a gauge of 14 or smaller (the smaller the gauge number, the wider the needle groove), with a gauge of 18 being currently considered to be the limit. This constraint is dictated by the requisite strength and durability of the transfer needles, i.e. a finer gauge needle would not possess these requisite characteristics for practical, commercial use. Heretofore, because of the constraint on the gauge of the transfer needles and the needle grooves in the dial and cylinder needle beds,. it has been difficult and impractical to knit high density fabrics, especially thin, light-weight, high density fabric.